Britain at war

The long-threatened launch of attacks on Afghanistan has done nothing to weaken British support for participation in military action, or to dent support for the way Tony Blair and George W Bush are handling the situation. A MORI poll for last night's ITV1 programme Tonight with Trevor McDonald, conducted on Tuesday, finds the ratings of both leaders steady, with seven in ten approving and only around one in five disapproving, and 72% support British troops being involved in the action ? no significant change from the 74% and 73% who said they would support British involvement in MORI's two polls last month. ICM's poll in this morning's Guardian, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, also finds very similar figures, 74% approving of "military action by the United States and Britain against Afghanistan", and 16% disapproving. (A separate ICM poll in the London Evening Standard finds that opinion in the capital, perhaps the likeliest target of any terrorist retaliation against Britain, is also strongly in favour).

Q Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the American response to the terrorist attacks on 11th September?

Q Do you approve or disapprove of the way Tony Blair is handling the British response to the terrorist attacks on 11th September?

Q (Sep) And if the United States were to take military action against those responsible for the attacks, would you support or oppose British troops being involved in this action?

Q (Oct) Now that the US has taken military action, do you support or oppose British troops being involved in this action?

ICM's poll, using a four-point scale, finds approval for Tony Blair even higher than MORI's: 47% think he has handled the crisis "very well" and 41% "quite well", while only 10% say he has handled it "not very well" or "not well at all". While it is misleading to compare these figures (as the Guardian does) to more general Prime Ministerial approval figures for earlier PMs, this is nevertheless an impressive show of support. (To make the distinction clear, both questions were asked in our poll for The Times at the end of last month: while only 19% disapproved of the way Mr Blair was handling the British response to the terrorist crisis, 26% were dissatisfied with the way he was doing his job as Prime Minister.)

It is perhaps worth remembering that Mr Blair has not needed a war to smash approval rating records ? in his first two years in office his satisfaction figures persistently surpassed those of any Prime Minister since Churchill during the War. But there is no doubt that Mr Blair's handling of the crisis has been well-received, and it will certainly do him no harm politically assuming that nothing goes disastrously wrong in the coming days and months. We might also note that the Gallup Organization in the USA has recorded that George W Bush on a 90% approval rating, the highest of any President in polling history.

Of course, even such strong levels of support as are evident in this country do not approach unanimity. The one in five or so who oppose British involvement may be substantially in a minority, but they still add up to a good many millions of the population. One significant factor is that the opinion of women are rather different from those of men ? 24% of women but 18% of men (in MORI's poll) disapprove of Mr Blair's handling of events, and 29% of women oppose taking military action against Afghanistan while only 17% of men feel the same.

The party political aspect of the situation is also evident, in a way which throws interesting light on the way in which political loyalties affect Britons' attitudes to their leaders. Tories are more supportive of President Bush (82% approve) than are Labour voters (74%), and are more likely to support British troops being involved now that the US has taken action (84% support compared to 77%). This is much as we would expect, since anti-war movements in this country are more usually of the left than of the right. Yet put the question in terms of approving how Mr Blair has handled the crisis, and the figures are the other way round ? 83% of Labour but only 73% of Conservatives approve of the way Mr Blair is handling the response. An object lesson in why it is sometimes worth asking about the same subject from many different angles to gain a rounded view of the public's feelings.

By way of comparison, the national mood in the USA is much less equivocal. The TNS Intersearch/ABC News poll in the USA on 8-9 October found 92% supporting the airstrikes, 76% would support use of ground troops to overthrow the Taliban government, and 87% would support military action against "other countries that assist or shelter terrorists". It seems unlikely that there are many Americans convinced, as was one correspondent to the London Evening Standard on Wednesday, that the polls are completely wrong and there is massive opposition to the war.

An NOP poll for the Daily Telegraph explores how recent events have affected attitudes towards Islam in general and British Muslims in particular. One in eight of the public, 13%, say their feelings towards Muslims in Britain have become less favourable since the terrorist attacks, and almost a quarter think that Muslims have fitted "pretty badly" (19%) or "very badly" (4%) into British society; but in both cases the vast majority take the contrary view. However there is more sympathy for the view, expressed controversially by Lady Thatcher a few days ago, that Muslim leaders in Britain have not condemned the attacks on the USA strongly enough: 45% think they have not. Even though only 9% say they think it fair "for people to link in their minds ordinary Muslims in Britain with the terrorist attacks", this suggests there is a possibility of increased racial tension, especially if there were to be terrorist attacks on Britain in response to events in Afghanistan. Using a broader question, the ICM/Guardian poll found that a quarter of the public feel "Islam is a threat to Western values", and the NOP/Daily Telegraph poll found strong support for a number of fairly simplistic and mostly negative stereotypical characterisations of Islam. (68% agree "It seems to have more to do with the middle ages than the modern world" and 77% that "It has a lot of fanatical followers". But, perhaps, in the circumstances these figures are less worrying than they might be; some form of backlash, however misplaced, was always inevitable.

MORI's poll found significant fears that the action in Afghanistan may provoke retaliation against Britain, and almost half think that it makes recession more likely. Either could pose significant political problems to Tony Blair if they were to occur. But, more optimistically, two-thirds (66%) of Britons believe that the Bush/Blair approach is helping to make the world a safer place. He, and we, can only hope they are right.